Harlow College finds Jan’s Apprentice

Janet Murray is a freelance education journalist, writing mainly for The Guardian and well as FE Week and the TES. Jan has been freelancing for ten years. She said: “I found I was getting really busy and having to turn down work, no self employed person wants to do that.

“I thought about hiring a researcher, but decided as an education journalist, who also happens to write an awful lot about apprenticeships… that I ought to really put my money where my mouth is and train somebody on the job.”

Over the years Janet has uncovered lots of myths about apprentices, she said; “There are lots of misconceptions about apprenticeships, the biggest one being that the government pays their wages!”

Janet will be paying her apprentice £6.08 an hour for 30 hours a week: the minimum wage for apprentices is just £2.50 an hour and Janet is hoping that her apprentice will also be able to do her NCTJs whilst training.

After a grueling two-day selection process Janet picked Rhian Jones from a field of 50 young people. Rhian is 22 and has done a variety of customer facing jobs before coming into journalism, and is really raring to go.

Rhian said: “This is a wonderful opportunity for me and I’m so pleased that I managed to stand out from the crowd. I started at Harlow College last week and feel like my feet haven’t touched the ground.

I’ve been blogging for WorldSkills and visited The Guardian offices – it’s all go, and so far, so good.”